After 11 years as an Infantryman...I'm now a cable guy with an opinion.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Otto responds to the Governor: SC Times LTE

I was not going to blog today, but since Bluewoman is working at the course, I'll take a few minutes to post this.

I support accounting for inflation on both the revenue and expense sides of a budget forecast. Inflation is real and any fiscally responsible person, much less an elected official, should account for it while budgeting.

We all know Governor Pawlenty vetoed the tax bill because of clauses accounting for inflation in budget forecasts.

Minnesota has performed very well over the years because we lived by aguiding principle regardless of which party was in control. That principle wasthat we allowed fiscal experts to create a budget forecast that gave astraightforward, honest picture of our state finances. This gave us as abaseline snapshot of where we were headed if nothing changed.

Then the governor, the House and the Senate would each craft their ownbudgets using that snapshot as the starting point. These budgets reflected theirparticular priorities. For example, some areas might get inflationary increases,while others were cut back or eliminated. The beauty of this system was that itallowed the fiscal experts to give Minnesotans, lawmakers and the media anhonest assessment of our financial picture.

Exactly, leave it to the forecasting experts to provide our lawmakers with an honest financial picture. Unfortunately, we all know the GOPers like to "cook the books".

Otto responds to claims that this practice, which occurs in 48 other states, puts government on "auto-pilot".

The claim that this puts government on automatic pilot spending is false.Because elected officials always retain the final say over spending priorities,no budget is ever automatic. Informed budget decisions must be made every year,and those decisions should always be based on accurate baseline forecasts.

I cannot comment on the LTE without some criticism though.

I feel it’s my responsibility to weigh in on the debate about whether toinclude inflation in the state budget forecast, which the governor cited as thecause of his veto of the tax bill.

Did this LTE come out before the end of the session? I think it would have been a more powerful statement had this been made while the decision makers were still making the decision, instead of the Monday Morning QB mentality. I agree with Rebecca Otto wholeheartedly.